Review of Pandorum (2009) by Zombiehampster — 28 Oct 2010

The story of Pandorum focuses on the crew of a sleeper ship called the Elysium and it's inevitable journey through space to their destination, the planet Tanis, which is supposed to be another Earth-like planet.

From the beginning of the movie it had me interested, as it tends to keep things very vague, dropping tiny bits of clues as to what is going on. It starts with Corporal Bower (Ben Foster) who wakes from suspended animation and finds that he cannot remember much, if anything, about what is going or where they are.

The story takes him on a journey through the ship as he attempts to uncover what is going on aboard the Elysium. Although I do see many strong resemblances or homage's to a slew of other movies, I don't feel the criticism aimed at it is deserved.

The flavor of Alien/s and Event Horizon come to mind, but from what I gather the similarities are more superficial than anything else. The cast is pretty decent, with Foster giving a solid and realistic performance in his role.

Denis Quaid manages to convey his character of Lieutenant Payton effectively, giving a good performance as well, but really starts to shine towards the end of the movie. The token girl/love interest Nadia, played by Antje Traue, is sometimes shaky in regards to her delivery, but does manage to convincingly play her role as the toughened scientist.

She manages to fight well, while not looking like a wafer-thin model like in some movies (cough, cough Resident Evil), and I find that a very good thing. I'm pretty tired of that stereotype and its actually more attractive in my view.

Plus shes nice to look at. Anyway the only real character I tended to wince at was Norman Reeduss's Shepard. I dont know if they wanted him to play it that way, but he seemed a bit overdone, but hey, maybe thats what was asked of him or how he wanted to do it.

Either way it seemed the least genuine for me. Overall I loved the ambiance of the movie and the pretty realistic actions and reactions of the lead cast to the events that transpire aboard the Elysium.

The movie held my interest well, aside from a few hiccups here and there. One of those was some of the B-movie like techniques they used for the action scenes, which to me kind of detracted from the horror of it all.

Some scenes seem a little too sped up, while others may have relied on a bit too much slow motion, but all in all the movie has a certain style that appealed to me. It aint Shakespeare, but then again, its not trying to be.

Definitely worth a look.